Twilight: To Hate or Not to Hate?

Hey everybody! Amy again. 🙂 Before I start on this topic, I want to make it clear that this is a DISCUSSION post, not a review! To read this, you don’t have to be in love with Twilight or otherwise. You don’t have to have read it, not at all! I personally HAVE read Twlight, but for the purposes of this post, I won’t be sharing my thoughts on it at this time. Second of all, you are in no way inclined to agree with me, nor should you. (Although if you don’t, I’d be very curious as to what your opinion on this topic is!) This is simply my observances. As I said, a topic to discuss. (Hopefully we can get a pretty good conversation going in the comments!) Alright, let’s get started!

Twlight: To Hate Or Not To Hate? That is the question, now isn’t it? Alright, now how many of you like Twilight? (I’m curious, tell me down in the comments) Hate it? (Tell me that too!) Okay, I’m just going to say (as a fact): I believe that most people either absolutely hate or absolutely love Twilight. I also believe that most people think Twilight is “not a good book”, a “lesser” book, not “quality” writing, etc. etc. Now let’s look at some facts. On Goodreads, the average rating is 3.56 stars. If you hover over the stars on Goodreads, 3 is “liked it” and 4 is “really liked it”. So, overall, people err on the side of liking it quite a bit. Goodreads also offers rating details. Guess what? 34% 5 star ratings, 22% 4 star ratings, 20% 3 star ratings, 11% 2 star ratings, and 11% 1 star ratings (although about 30000 more 1 star than 2). So where does that put us? Clearly, people hating it (which often seems overpowering) is in the minority. What’s your point, Amy? Just bear with me here- let’s look at another couple of popular romances YAs with a “reputation” to see how Twilight compares. Fallen: 34% 5 star, 26% 4 star, 22% 3 star, 10 % 2 star, and 5% 1 star. The Heir: 32% 5 star, 34% 4 star, 23% 3 star, 6% 2 star, and 2% 1 star. As you can see, Fallen is extremely similar, and The Heir is fairly close as well. However, no one (for the most part) looks at them as “taboo”, do they? Twilight just happens to have a reputation, and for what? What makes Twilight any different than those others?

I don’t have any statistics for it, but as far as I can see, Twilight was originally received very well before the bad reviews became more prominent. But isn’t that the same with every book? I mean, sure, Twilight is that kind of romance, but this is quite clear from the blurb. If you read Twilight, you need to be expecting a romance, because that is what it is classified as, and therefore, that is what it contains. Although there are action scenes in the book, it is still mainly romance, and the whole thing is centered around that (obviously). You don’t like that the vampires sparkle? Hmmm… What about all the other books? Don’t you dislike things in those as well? What about Allegiant? Hardly anyone likes that ending.

I guess my point is just that I’m opposed to hating the IDEA of Twilight. I have no problem with people who don’t like romance and/or YA and therefore believe Twilight is not for them. Furthermore, I understand if you attempted to read Twilight and it just wasn’t your favorite, for whatever reason. But I don’t appreciate hearing people say things like, “Oh, it’s Twilight. Better avoid it.” or “OMG YOU’VE READ TWILIGHT!!!???!!! WHY???” You could do the same to Colleen Hoover’s books, or The Fault in Our Stars, or Fallen, or The Heir… Anything, really.

To conclude this short little post, I want to again repeat that this in no way has anything to do with whether I liked the book or not. It’s merely an observation that I thought would be an interesting discussion topic. (Also, I’m aware that I missed my Shoutout Sunday, but I figured that since I just did one, I should let it fly for this week. Hope you don’t mind. 🙂 Plus, the page for my Reading Challenges is now up! Go check it out here!) Let me know what you think!

Have you read Twilight? If so, how much did you like it? If not, do you plan to? Why or why not? Do you agree with me on this topic? Do you have more to add to what I said? If you don’t agree, I’m curious to hear why! Tell me about it. Did you enjoy reading this post? Would you like to see more like it? Did you like my edit? HUGS FOR ALL!!! Say hi in those comments there. Just scroll a little bit… There you go! 🙂 Hope your Mondays weren’t too bad!

Go, recruit more book addicts! What? I did not say anything of the sort!

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35 thoughts on “Twilight: To Hate or Not to Hate?”

I have a love-hate relationship with Twilight. However, I believe it’s more love than hate. Twilight got me into reading again. Also, it was something my best friend and I could fangirl over. So, I have more positive than negative feelings about it.

I loved the series when it came out but I don’t think I would ever read it again. I also have all the movies on DVD and my roommate and I watched them all over the summer and realized that they are kind of terrible lol I guess I’ve just grown out of the series

Well, I can definitely understand that. There’s a few series that I enjoyed quite a bit, but don’t plan on ever reading for various reasons. Haha. Well, also, (I can’t prove this but it’s just what I’ve heard) I’ve heard that most of the movies are terrible and the books are so much better.

I like some of it and I loved them when I was 12 or so, but I think there are many better books. Perhaps a lot of the hate is because they are so popular which results in people would never normally read something like that reading it and then disliking it.

I think twilight is good, but not the best. The first book gave me a lot of feels. Eclipse was amazing and interesting. I love the action in that book as well as the other Cullens’ backstory. But I just don’t like New Moon and breaking Dawn. Bella and Edward in New Moon is annoying. The plot twist at the end of breaking dawn is weak and anti climatic. Breaking dawn is a gigantic book but nothing really happened. So my stand here is half and half.

We read them and at the time we really loved it because it felt amazing. We discuss about it frequently, about how stephanie meyer makes stalking and obsessing over a boy completely normal and “cool”… I guess? But once we saw the movies we actually realized what we were loving and since we then we don’t hate it but we don’t love it either. Although the novella was fabulous!

I love them! 🙂 It’s been awhile since I read them, but I remember devouring them. It was strange to see the shift though, because in the beginning everyone was talking enthusiastically about the books, but as you indicate in your discussion, it became ‘cool’ to hate them. It’s sad to me, because you make a great point that it’s not better or worse than some other books, yet they don’t get the stigma. It’s just that it got so crazy popular I guess. I love it for what it is, and it was a book that really drew me into YA so I appreciate that as well.